New PR calculation theory

Do the number and quality of links really matter?

damlag

Hi folks, I have recently seen a website (let's call it "A"), with 7 inbound links from other sites. 1 of those links had PR 5, second PR 4, third PR 3 and the others had 0.

That web page we are talking about (A) has a PR of 4 with only 7 inbound links. When I looked at those webpages that link to (A), I wouldn't say they're very related to the theme of that (A) website. There are links from a couple of "link farms", and that page, which shared the biggest pagerank, PR 5, had other 30 links on that page.

The website A, has about 12 pages, and not very content rich pages.

One thing I've noticed that it had very little competition. 40,000 results on google by their main keyword. They don't even have a title, description or keywords in their meta tags. Their main page is made of FLASH.

How the heck they got a PR 4?

Everybody is talking about relavancy and quality factors, which determine the PR of a site. But maybe it's not about the quality of a linking page?

Maybe the biggest factor is competitiveness, if the market is very small, you can get some level of PR even with poor quality links? But if it has a big market, maybe more factors come into play then..? Could that be true? What do you think...

rogerd

5:25 pm on Sep 23, 2004 (gmt 0)

Damlag, the PR5 link, with a little help from the lower PR links, is probably enough to give it the PR4. Note that on a site of yours, for example, the home page may be PR5, and the sub pages may be PR4 despite the fact that their only linkage is from the site itself.

Quality and relevance don't affect PR. These factors may well affect position in search results, of course, while PR is itself declining in impact (vs. its historical importance).

To add to the confusion, the PR value shown by the toolbar seems to be increasingly erratic, and perhaps may not always show the page's "real" PR.

dirkz

5:32 pm on Sep 23, 2004 (gmt 0)

PR is purely mechanical, just some number crunching.

Powdork

7:26 am on Sep 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

Damlag, seeing your nick, I think we have a new name for the sandbox.:)

dirkz

8:44 am on Sep 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

LOL

piskie

8:53 am on Sep 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

"They don't even have a title, description or keywords in their meta tags. Their main page is made of FLASH"

None of these has any effect at all on Googles PR, just inbound links and their quality.

papachumba

9:28 am on Sep 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

and what if the site in question hasn't got any inbound links? Im seeing a site of PR4 with no inbound links whatsoever, only outbound...

dirkz

12:29 pm on Sep 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

> Im seeing a site of PR4 with no inbound links whatsoever, only outbound...